


This is the Future

by Changeling_Serenade



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Growing Up, Neglect, Non-Graphic Child Abuse, Non-Graphic Violence, Some mildly disturbing things, uh...Animal death?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 22:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Changeling_Serenade/pseuds/Changeling_Serenade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Jade, have you ever felt like there's something very wrong with the world we live in?"</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>"Oh John. I've been feeling that ever day for my entire life."</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Being a Crocker is hard, and sometimes it hurts. A lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the Future

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from an Owl City song of the same name.

When they are seven, she murders their kitten in front of them. 

It isn't really their kitten yet, if you want to get nit-picky. They had found her, teeny-tiny and all alone, in their massive backyard during their allotted hour of playtime. She is mostly a dark gray with some lighter gray woven in, and her eyes are red. John doesn't think cats normally have red eyes, and he tells Jade as much. Jade nods thoughtfully. She tells him that she thinks that might be why the mama cat left her all alone.

They love her instantly and dub her theirs. They name her Troll, because they both agree it fits. John holds her on his lap while Jade spins around some, chanting "Troll kitty, Troll Kitty, Troll cat, Troll cat, cat Troll cat cat!" Troll is soft and warm on his lap, purring gently, and his sister is giggling and happy, and the sun is nice on his back. Everything is perfect. 

Then, later, they show Troll to their mother. Looking back, it had been a stupid idea. 

She looks at the kitten the way someone else might look at rotting road kill at the side a highway. She looks at them in a similar way as they babble to her all about how they found her and how much they want to keep her. When they tell her what they named her, their mother's eyes darken. They stop talking. 

She snaps Troll's neck with a twist of her wrists, then lets her drop to the ground like a used napkin. The little creature is stiller then stone, her mouth lolling open, a little bit of tongue pressing out, and her wide red eyes are staring at nothing. 

"Useless animal." Their mother hisses, then walks away leaving two seven year olds, one on her knees sobbing and the other staring blankly in horrified shock, on their own.

It's hard to be a Crocker. 

X

They are not her real children. They are reminded of that often. They are orphans that she took in out of the goodness of her heart, and they should be grateful. They are, however, really brother and sister, and that's a huge comfort. 

They look it, too. They have the same hair and the same skin and the same smile. They have different colored eyes, though. Jade’s are green like grass or celery. John’s are bright blue like May skies or blue jays. 

Neither one of them likes it here. 

They wake up at 6:30, and have since they were five. They eat breakfast, then have lessons until noon, which is when they have lunch. Another hour and a half of lessons, and then an hour of play time. Back to lessons, then dinner. Bed at 9:00 sharp.

John doesn’t mind the order so much, but Jade hates it with a burning passion. She wants to oversleep. She wants more time to be outside. She wants days to do nothing. Honestly, John wants all that too, but he is better at fake smiles and silence. John is good at other people. Jade is not. John is, at his heart, a trickster. A prankster. He knows when speaking will and will not work in his favor. Jade is blunt and to the point. She always says just what she thinks right as she thinks it.

Jade and their mother don’t get along very well. Jade and their teachers get along even less. They’ve both been hit (spare the rod, spoil the child), but Jade gets hit more.

That’s the thing John hates. It makes him want to hit back, because how dare they touch his sister?

They are paraded around for important people to see, Mother smiling and hovering over their shoulders and cooing about how much she loves them for the reporters and cameras. It is all horribly fake.

They both have their own rooms, but have been crawling into bed with each other their whole lives. They never get to interact with anyone else their own age. All they have is each other, and they cling. They are Jade and John, John and Jade, and they are heirs to a monster they don’t want controlled by a mother that’s not their mother. 

They survive. 

X

Jade has been having nightmares since she was just a little kid. Really awful nightmares, the kind that make her sit bolt upright in bed with a scream on her lips. John will always be right there, every time, to hold her hand until she calms. 

Sometimes she talks about it. Sometimes she doesn’t. When she does, John sometimes wishes she didn’t.

She tells him about a giant demonic dog that chases her around a winding castle, blood soaked maw snapping at her heels. She tells him about the bodies- his, with a stab wound through his chest, hers, lying crumpled and burned at the demon’s feet, two she doesn’t recognized, a boy and a girl, with fair hair and extraordinary colored eyes. There is always more than one body for the boy, she says, but she knows they’re all him. One has a chest full of bullets and that makes her feel guilty for no reason. The girl always stands in shadow, and Jade can’t see her right. 

She says she feels like, sometimes, the dreams are more real than life.

When she says that, John sneaks into the kitchen (because some rules are stupid and need to be ignored) and makes two cups of hot coco. He sits up with her for hours and hours, not caring how long it takes her to fall back asleep. It never does take her long anyway; she’s always been an easy sleeper. It always takes him much longer.

Sometimes, he can picture the other boy and girl with startling clarity, as if he had had the dream instead of her. Blond hair, red eyes   
_(redtextrunonsentencesbadrapsswordandcape)_. Blond hair, pinkish eyes _(pinktextbigwordsdoyouwanttotalkjohnwandsandglowingeyes)_. Two names, at the very tip of his tongue, so close, he just has to reach-

And then the moment is gone, and John is almost glad. 

X

Then have known there is something wrong with their mother since they were about 12. The first clue is that she never changes.

Looking through the few old pictures of her was eerie as hell, because she is identical to what she looks like now, right down to the same haircut. She never, ever changes even a little. She never, ever ages, and no one but them seems to notice and find it odd. They were really starting to get used to that. 

She’s also freakishly strong, even if she doesn’t show it very much. Sometimes, she appears out of nowhere as if she teleported or something. She knows things, sometimes says things, that don’t make sense and no one should know or think about. 

The first thing John thinks of is vampire. They scrap that almost at once because life isn’t a bad fantasy novel. 

The next thing Jade comes up with is alien, which they also scrap because life also isn’t a bad Sci-Fi novel. 

They are unsure of what else to ever consider, until, completely by accident, they see her horns (large and huge and looping _what what what is going on?_ ) and come to a conclusion. 

Their mother, Betty Crocker, is a demon. 

X

They are 14, and it is very late at night, and they should be sleeping but they are anything but. This night has been planned for an entire year. It is going to happen tonight.

At least, that’s what Jade thinks. 

She comes bursting into John’s room at a run, eyes shining in a way that haven’t for years and talking very fast in a whisper. 

“John!” She’s fully dressed and has a stuffed-to-bursting backpack over her shoulder. “John, are you ready? I can’t believe it, I checked the train schedule again and it’s perfect! It’s like someone knew we would need a quick getaway tonight and decide to make it really easy for us! Look at this-“

She stops when she sees him. He is perched on the edge of his bed, a little slumped over, his hands lightly fisted in the blanket. He is dressed, but he doesn’t have a coat on. There is no bag in sight. 

“John?” She takes a half step towards him, reaching out. “What are you doing? We need to leave any minute, do you not get that?”

He looks up at her. “Jade.”

“There’s no time for waiting around, we have a very limited window here! We talked about this, come on, where’s your bag?”

“Jade.”

“And your shoes!” Her tone took on an edge of hysteria. “How come you’re not wearing shoes? Did you not wake up or something? Hurry, you slowpoke! We really do need to scram like, now, if we want to pull this off! What are you-“

“Jade!” He stands and crosses to her, gripping her upper arms. 

“What?” She looks at him with scared green eyes that were dampening in the corners, and he wants to go jump out the window because he made his sister cry. “What is it, John?”

“I’m not going.” The words fly out of his mouth like they are greased and on fire. “I’m not coming with you.”

Jade crumples, she absolutely crumples, and John thinks the window is looking better and better. He steers them both to the bed. 

“Why not?” Jade asks, voice small and quiet. “I know you don’t want to stay here.”

“I can’t.” He runs a hand through her hair, fingers shaking. “Jade, I can’t.”

_“Why not?”_

And John swallows and says something he doesn’t want to say. “She would never let us both go.”

It is true, so horribly true and it makes them both sick. If Jade, the disobedient one, the one who talked back, the one who rebelled left, Mother wouldn’t break down completely. She would be angry, yes, but not angry enough to do anything about it. If she lost John, though… If she lost them both…

She would go out and drag them both back by the hair. Then tie them to the house so they could never leave ever again. She knows this. John knows this. Now, Jade knows it too.

They sit there for a while, holding each other, but not very long. As Jade said, they were on a time limit. His sister stands and pulls him up with her, and then they stand there a long moment, holding each other at arm’s length. 

Jade says, “This isn’t goodbye. Not for good.”

John says, “I know,” even though he doesn’t. Then he pulls her into another hug, tight and familiar and safe, and tries not to think how it might be their last. “Jade,” he says, “You are going to change the world.” 

And she smiles a tiny smile and pecks him on the cheek, lifting her backpack once again. “I love you. I’ll be in touch,” is the last thing she says to him, and he pretends she’s not crying and she does the same for him. 

“I love you too. Now go on! You’ve got a train to catch!”

She gives him one last watery grin and a tiny wave, slips through the door, and then she’s gone. 

John doesn’t move for a very long time. Then he turns off the lights, lies down in bed, and doesn’t sleep. 

The next morning, when Jade is discovered missing, is the only time in his life John is truly beaten. Mother screams at him and hits him, over and over again, _where is she, where is she?!_ And John covers his head with his arms and repeats each time “I don’t know. I really don’t know,” while in his head he is repeating ‘she got away, I’m so glad she got away, she’s free and you can’t touch her, my sister is free.’ 

Mother finally believes him, eventually, and stalks away. He gets up and stumbles back to his room, falling back on his bed and curling up on his side. There is no one there to help with bandages and sneak him ice, no reassuring words or hand in his, no friend, no Jade.   
_They_ have become _him._

John Crocker is alone. 

X

He has gotten very good at playing the dutiful son he is not. 

It’s not hard, really, when you get used to it. He keeps a neutral expression and nods, no matter how horrible the thing he is being shown is, no matter how much he wants to rip it apart with his hands. He forces a smile when he is introduced to important people, engages in annoying small talk, let’s himself be praised on what a ‘good boy’ he was (He is not a dog, holy hell, he is not a dog). Sometimes he plays the piano for them. 

His mother shows him more and more about Crocker Corp, and he slowly gets more and more sick as he sees just how deep all the plans go. Just what the plans are, what then hint at, what they could mean for the future of _everything._

He can’t do a thing about it. Not yet. He knows, maybe, one day he’ll be able to. For now, he is a minor and completely in his mother’s power. So he smiles and shakes hands and learns all the tricks of the business. He lets his mother smile and shower him with empty praise and emptier kisses. He learns how to manipulate data and gently twist the public’s mind. 

He learns how to fire a gun. He learns where to stab so they’ll bleed out silently. 

He swears to himself he will keep his kindness, his humanity, no matter how deep in he gets. He takes refuge in stupid things, does all he can to distract himself- the piano, at first, but then he starts teaching himself magic tricks. Palming coins and sleight of hand, a few card tricks as well. He gets rather good at it, over time. 

He hears nothing from Jade, and his heart slowly breaks. 

X

The woman on the wall is a journalist who stuck her nose in too far. 

God only knows why she was suspicious of the Corporation in the first place, but something had prompted her to dig. As it turned out, she had been very good at her job. She hadn’t discovered everything, but she had found enough to do a significant amount of damage. Maybe, if she had gone straight to print, she could have changed everything. 

Instead, in a fit of extreme bravery or extreme arrogance (and John guessed it was the latter), she had marched into his mother’s office and told her to her face exactly what she found, what she thought of it, and just how she was going to expose it. And how there was nothing his mother could do about it. 

That’s where she had been very, very wrong. 

Now, she is strung out like a soiled sheet in by her wrists in the basement of Crocker Corp, bruised and oozing blood from cuts up and down her body. His mother is anything but merciful. 

This is the second time he has seen her. The first time, she didn’t see him. John had heard some of the hired muscle cackling about the ‘dumb bitch’ they were ‘taking care of’, and morbid curiosity had made him go to look. 

They had been beating her. She had been crying out. With her hair hanging over her face, she had looked like his sister. 

He didn’t sleep that night. 

Now he stands in front of her, and sees she really doesn’t look like his sister at all. Her hair is too light, a dark brown to Jade’s midnight black, and her face is too full. She is, however, rather young, and certainly no older than 28. 

It takes her a long moment to realize he’s there. It takes a longer moment for her to weakly raise her head to look at him. 

“Good lord.” She rasps. “You’re just a kid.” 

He wants to protest and tell her that, no, he’s 17 and he stopped being a kid a long time ago. 

Back when he was a kid, one of his and Jade’s many live-in teachers had a rather sever case of insomnia, and had taken sleeping pills to combat it. The teacher was long gone, but the pills had stayed in the medicine cabinet for whatever reason. 

The night before, he had ground up all 11 pills into a fine powder. 

This morning, he mixed the powder with a glass of extra sweet lemonade. He added ice cubes. He popped in a light pick bendy straw. 

He is clutching the glass in his hand as he looks at the bleeding journalist. 

John opens his mouth to say something, and what comes out is an incredibly unintelligent, “does it hurt?” 

She blinks up at him. “Yes,” is her answer. “A lot.” 

He swallows. “I’m sorry.”

“Kid,” She chuckles weakly, “what are you doing here?”

He wants, suddenly, to tell her the whole story. Instead, he shrugs and says, “It’s a family thing.” Then, with a tiny smile, he offers the lemonade. She stares at him a long second before she, very slowly, wraps her lips around the straw and sips. 

He thinks she knows what he’s doing. He sits with her until she falls asleep, then until her breath stops. 

John doesn’t know what to feel. 

(This is not the last time something like that happens. It is not the last time he stops a person’s pain.)

X

When he is eighteen, he leaves his mother’s house. 

“I need to learn!” He says with a smile. “I need to get real world experience! Stretch my legs a little, get a feel for real life! Don’t worry, this isn’t for good, yes mother of course I’m coming back.” 

He goes to college, majoring in business. He does well. He isn’t happy, but he didn’t really expect to be. He thinks, maybe, he forgot what real happiness feels like. 

One night his roommate convinces him to go to an open mike night at a comedy club near campus. After a lot of pressure from said roommate and the friends he’s brought along (they aren’t really John’s friends), he goes up to the stage and does an act. 

He is, surprisingly, fantastic at it. He doesn’t know how, but the words roll out of his mouth like they’d been there his whole life, and were just waiting for him to figure it out and let them go free. He imagines he’s bantering with Jade again, making her giggle quietly under the covers in the middle of the night, when they shouldn’t be up and will get in big trouble if they’re caught but that only makes it more fun. He adds the magic tricks he learned as a child, almost as an afterthought, but the crowd loves it. 

And people are laughing, and it feels so good that people are laughing, because he feels like he’s helping them in the way he always wanted to help people but never could (he only helped with poisoned cups of lemonade to take the pain away). And by the end of it he’s smiling too, a big, goofy grin he thought had died years ago. 

He waits a week, pretending to think it over even though he’s already made up his mind, then calls his mother and says he doesn’t really want to work at Crocker Corp anymore. ‘I was never any good at the business stuff anyway,’ he says. ‘I never enjoyed it, but I really enjoy this! Haven’t you always wanted me to be happy?’ 

She doesn’t seem convinced. 

And then, in a fit of bravery, he said, ‘and we both know you don’t really need an heir, Mother.”

It is the first indication he ever gives that he knows she’s something other than human. She goes very quiet for a moment. 

“You’re right of course, dear. If you found something you enjoy more than the family business, who am I to stop you?”

He spends all the time he’s not in classes working on acts. He fills up notebooks with scribbled ideas, only the crumple up the paper and chuck it in the waste basket. He tries to remember things from a book he had as a child, which his mother took away from him before he could finish. It had been a really good joke book; he wishes he had it back. 

But he thinks that what he comes up with is pretty decent. He starts going to more open mike nights, any place he can find that will let him preform and is within reasonable distance from his school. And he’s getting better. He’s getting noticed. He’s gets a few offers to perform for pay. 

He takes as many of those offers as he can and drops out of school. He pays for his own shitty apartment, and when he’s not doing shows he waits tables to make ends meet (he doesn’t really want to relay on Mother anymore).

He’s happier then he’s been in years. 

X

He is twenty-two, and before a show he sits down at the club’s bar and has a drink (not a strong drink, but a drink). He’s been doing rather well for himself in this new world. He’s one push away from an honest-to-god big break. He smiles at the kid behind the bar and tips extra. 

A woman approaches him. Mid-length blond hair loose on her shoulders, grey eyes and a well-balanced face. She’s pretty, he guesses, but not really in-your-face pretty. She perches on the stool next to him like others might sit on a throne. 

“Are you John Crocker?” She asks him. 

He is surprised, but says “Yes. Don’t really use Crocker much anymore, though.” Then he asks, “How do you know who I am?”

She gives him a little smile. “You’re a rising star, butter cup. Don’t be surprised if people know who you are.”

He laughs a little. “Not really! I don’t even think I’m all that good, to tell the truth!”

“Don’t sell yourself short.” She pauses and takes a sip of her drink. “Tell you what, darling. Let’s make a bet.”

John’s surprised. “I’m not really a gambling man, miss.”

“Well, lucky for you I’m a gambling woman.” She gives him a sidelong wink. “Mr. John Crocker, I bet you a coffee date that your life is going to change in the next few days.”

John cocks an eyebrow at her. “Change how?”

She lifts her own right back at him. “Guess you’ll just have to see, sweetie.” 

He looks at her a long moment, and then he surprises himself. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll take that bet.”

“Wonderful!” The woman beams and slips him a business card. “That’s where I can be reached. Call me if I win, because in that case you owe me coffee, Mr. Crocker. Or if I lose, and in that case I will mourn the end of my winning streak.” She slides the barstool back, drops some money on the counter and moves her bag farther up her arm. “Until we meet again, Sweet pea. Oh, and break a leg. Not that you need it, I’m sure you’ll knock the crowd dead.” 

And with a finial smile she’s gone, leaving a slight floral sent behind. 

He does do a very good show that night. Not anything really noteworthy, he thinks, but a very good show all the same. 

He gets a call the next day. A big producer saw the show, liked what he saw, and wanted to sign John for his program. His television program. 

It is the big break John didn’t dare hope for.

He calls the number on the business card in a daze and says that he owes a lady a coffee date.

He talks to her, gets to know her, and finds her interesting and smart and quick as a whip. One cup of coffee turns into two, turns into dinner, turns into a movie. 

Somewhere along the line, John falls in love. 

X

He marries the gambling women, to their mutual joy. He becomes a successful comedian, getting roles in television shows and stand-up gigs and some bit parts in movies. He never really becomes famous, he never has people with cameras following him around, but he’s reasonably well known. He and his wife move out into a little house in the suburbs. ‘Far away from the bustle!’ he tells her. 

_‘Far away from my mother’_ , he thinks. 

He reads the newspaper and finds out about a new company that’s challenging Crocker Corp. It’s run by a women called English (he recognizes the name of the unknown lord his mother had cursed on a daily basis) who never stays in one place very long and is said to be very odd.

He looks at the article, smiles and puts the paper down. 

He thinks, _See, Jade? What did I tell you?_ And the bitterness in his chest is mostly gone. He still hopes for a letter, but understands why one doesn’t come. She is protecting him, just as he protected her when they were 14. 

Soon, he and his wife have a son, and life goes on. He performs and makes people laugh, avoids his mother as much as he can. Tries to make up for everything she does by donating to charities. 

Life, he decides, is very, very okay. 

X

His wife dies young of a heart attack, when his son is 15 and he is in his mid-40s. 

X

The world around him enters the technology age, and John finds himself surprisingly competent at computers. He enjoys the internet, which is considered strange for someone of his age- in his 60s, old enough to have a full-grown son. He can’t really explain why, and waves it off to the fact that he’s always been something of a fast learner. 

On day, completely by chance, he finds a link to a web comic. 

It’s the kind of humor he doesn’t really understand. Stuff relying on absurdity, and ‘so bad it’s good’… or maybe ‘it’s good because it’s so bad’? John knew straight jokes inside and out, but this kind of thing went right over his head. 

Something, though he’s not sure what or why, makes him copy and paste the link to the comic into an Email. He sends it to a young movie producer he’s friendly with. The guy loves this kind of stuff. 

Maybe something will come of it, maybe not. But probably not. It was just a whim, after all. 

He sometimes gets those, weird and unexplainable whims. They’re mostly little things, strange urges to do something he might have not done otherwise. Like teach his son to make cake, even though he had a certain distain for the stuff. His son liked it, though. He had a real talent for baking. 

Another one came after reading an entry in a literary magazine. It had been the winner of a contest they held for young writers, and something in it speaks to him.

It’s about how it feels to be alone in the crowd, like everyone around you is missing out a wonderful, terrible secret that only you know about. It talks about having dreams about something far away and better, and knowing there must be someone else out there who understands but never being able to find them. How dreams of flying mingle with dreams of dying and nothing ever makes sense. How books and words are a sanctuary nothing else can compare to, how they can be better friends then any person can be. What it’s like to forget how to be anything else except alone. 

John reads it three times before ripping it out if the magazine. Later that day he buys a thick notebook bound in lavender, then a fountain pen with ink the same color. He takes his own blue pen and writes a note.

_i very much enjoyed your work, you have real talent. thought you might enjoy these.  
-a fan_

Then, like a man possessed, he flips to the back cover of the notebook and writes a single word- _turntechGodhead._

He doesn’t know what the word means. He doesn’t know why he writes it. He doesn’t know how he knows what address to put on the box he sends. 

He tries not to think about it. 

X

It is a month or so after he sends the notebook and emails the link that John feels like his life is going to change again. On yet another whim, he writes his will. 

Days pass one by one, with him and his son working side by side in the comedy club he opened after his wife passed away. His feeling of nervous dread grows. 

Then one night, he gets a phone call from an unknown number, which he usually let’s go to the machine. Something makes him pick this one up.

“Hello, John.” Says a warm, familiar, familiar, so familiar voice. Different, older from the last time he heard it, but a voice he would always be able to recognize even if he hadn’t heard it outside his dreams since he was 14. 

Her name slips from his mouth as if covered in honey and on fire. “Jade!” 

And then he bursts into tears. 

She waits for him to compose himself, apologizing over and over again for not contacting him in this long, while he repeats it’s fine, it’s fine, he’s being stupid, it’s fine. 

When he is finally able to stop bawling like a child, they talk. They talk a very long time. They talk about their mother, her plans- the ones John knows for sure and the one’s Jade figured out on her own, and whether or not she is really a demon. They talk about growing up without each other. John tells her with a thick throat about the sleeping pills he gave to suffering prisoners, the triggers he pulled on guns Mother aimed. She coos to him, tells him that it’s all right, she understands, he didn't havee a choice, she should have taken him with her in the first place. She still loves him. He’s her brother and she’ll always love him. Jade tells him about running, doing everything she could to find money. She worked in the circus a while, she says. She tells him about how she made a name for herself, changed her name, started to take down Crocker Corp from the outside in. She is now living on an island, by herself, miles away from anything.

They talk about John’s wife and son and his career. They talk about childhood memories. They talk about the future. They talk about the weather. 

It is very late by the time they finish talking, and John is seated by the window, looking at the stars. 

“Jade,” he says, “have you ever felt like there’s something very wrong with the world we live in?”

She laughs, but it’s not a happy laugh. “Dear John,” he can hear the smile in her voice, “I have been feeling that every day for my entire life.” 

X

The next day, after John sends his son out to get something from a delivery van outside, something comes streaking from the sky and hits the club head on with him still inside. 

He feels the strangest sense of déjà vu, then nearly nothing at all.

John Crocker dies in fire, but all he feels is wind.

**Author's Note:**

> I just...Really like the idea of Alpha John pulling a few strings, even if he didn't really know what he was doing. 
> 
> And I know a lot of people think HIC was a good mom, but...I don't know, I can't see it. I don't think she'd be wildly abusive, more avoidant then anything else, but she's got a hell of a temper and she's not really a nice lady. As I have tried to show here. 
> 
> And the girl he marries is meant to be a lot like Vriska.


End file.
